Sealing the Deal || KakaSaku

Kakashi's Birthday

Notes:

Hi all, I'm not sure how best to tag the setting so here's a lil reference so we can get right to the good stuff without confusion:

• By a skill only Kakashi can muster, he has temporarily evaded taking over as Hokage at the end of the war.
• Under the ruse of wanting to re-adjust his skills sans Sharingan, Tsunade concedes and has temporarily reinstated him in Anbu.
• He's had a couple of close calls already and is about to face Sakura's loving wrath.

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Her anxious footsteps were beginning to draw looks from the guards on duty at the main gate. Looking out over the horizon through the gaping wooden doors, Sakura's internal monologue only sped up her pacing.

What if he's too tired... or worse, injured again? What if he can't come back by today and I lose the timing? My next mission is already tomorrow...

Her fingers worried the loose tendril of hair that fell in front of her ear. Biting her lip, she mentally recounted everything Tsunade had told her on Monday.

His mission was a solo A-rank mission scheduled to take one week. He'd already been gone for 3 days when I badgered Shishou about it, so he should be coming home today. Which means today is definitely his birthday. And seeing as no one else is here waiting to greet him, it's more likely than not that he hasn't made other plans.

She smiled in spite of herself. It wasn't that she wished for his friends and colleagues to do nothing special for his birthday - she'd never want him to feel neglected. But she was happy that they generally seemed none the wiser of his birthdate. Her teammates, including Yamato, had certainly had no idea when she asked them weeks ago. In fact, she'd been asking every once in a while since she was a genin, hoping to pry the prized information out of somebody. But just like their mission to sneak a peek at his face all those years ago, his personal details were just as hard to unmask.

But in the end, it had been by a mere slip of the tongue on Tsunade's part that Sakura finally got what she wanted. After a very routine Monday morning report to her Hokage, which somehow always devolved into worrying about her former Sensei until she got scolded, Tsunade let slip that the date of Kakashi's return signaled a well-deserved paid vacation. One which she'd purposely scheduled to commence on the good man's birthday-how dare Sakura insinuate that she was slave-driving Konoha's best Anbu operative!

Perhaps it was the case that Kakashi's friends had come to accept by now that he just wasn't a presents-and-party sort of person. But to Sakura, enduring her Shishou's temper for this secret knowledge was priceless. So what if he didn't care for parties? That certainly didn't have to preclude him for receiving presents. And what she wanted to give him was extra special-it wasn't something that made sense to just hand over any old time. But by the same token, she wasn't about to make a huge deal out of it. He wouldn't like that.

She wanted this to be something he'd like. Something meaningful. And she was sure he'd make an exception for this.

So as the mid-afternoon sun began to drift lower on that distant horizon her heartbeat and her pacing grew a little faster.

He better not be coming back on a stretcher this time. I don't know if I have it in me to see him like that again. I know the war is over, and that he's always been more than capable without his Sharingan, but that doesn't mean an A-rank mission is any less dangerous...

She stilled, right in the middle of the gate and looked skyward with a sigh.

All I want is to see him.